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MAKE Asks: is a weekly column where we ask you, our readers, for responses to maker-related questions. We hope the column sparks interesting conversation and is a way for us to get to know more about each other.

This week’s question: If you could choose anyone, living or dead, to collaborate with on a project, who would it be, and what would you make?

I would build an off-grid house with the late physicist Richard Feynman. Not only is this project a life-long dream of mine, but I would be fascinated by observing Feynman’s approach to a project in which he doesn’t have aptitude. He was known for bravely picking up new skills throughout his life (painting, bongo playing), and I feel this would be no exception.

In addition to being an online editor for MAKE Magazine, Michael Colombo works in fabrication, electronics, sound design, music production and performance (Yes. All that.) In the past he has also been a childrens’ educator and entertainer, and holds a Masters degree from NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program.

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I’d love to get on board with the crew from the Tiny House Blog, or one of the many other Open Source / Maker Housing projects. We’re in the process of converting an old Scout Camp into a Warcraft-style Ren Faire / Gaming (LARP) Ground, where we need to house 200+ players for a weekend game, almost every weekend of the year. The insight and creativity, as well as the technical skills, from some of these makers being able to “cut loose” on a fun project would be great to see.

ameyring

Gordon McComb – he’s knowledgeable not just about robots, but all the little things you need to do to make robots move and interact with the world. His books are treasures and the info on plastics and woods is helpful for other projects.

chuck

William Gibson! Our ‘today’ was his ‘tomorrow’ over thirty years ago. His vision of the information age and its implications on society blur the line between imagination and creation, between prediction and influence. I make unconventional musical instruments and my current project, an installation of self generating, ever-changing music devices, was inspired by a bit from one of his stories. The hero winds up on a space station operated by Rastafarians. There is an AI that generates a constantly changing sound track of computer generated dub music. Gibson’s genius isn’t in pridicting technology but in predicting how we will use that technology. ‘The street will find its own uses for things’ is the best description of the geek and maker scene that I’ve ever heard. A collaboration with him on my musical environments would be awesome.

Geoff

Collin Cunningham. Because it would likely be musical, certainly be creative, I’d learn a heap and it would be a guaranteed blast.

http://gravatar.com/asobernewt asobernewt

Bob Moog or Les Paul. Make a synth or some crazy recording gear.

emily

yoko ono… and we would build a sky

http://www.facebook.com/ke6jno Michael Beck

I would want my Grandfather who is now deceased. He was a master cabinetmaker trained in the years prior to WWII in Germany. He was trained in the old-school fashion and I would love to have gotten more skills from him than I did….

http://pauldutch.wordpress.com Paul Dutch

That’s easy!
You say we could choose anyone living or dead..
But what about someone who hasn’t been born yet??
I’d like to work together with the person who invents a proper full blown Replicator in the future. The project would be obviously to invent a true Replicator that deconstructs matter as we know it to build anything we require! We wouldn’t have to be concerned about waste any more as we can now fully repurpose its matter to Replicate anything that we need!
Thanks Person from the Future!

rub

I would make the eden on earth with god

http://Skeletontheatre.com Dave Baldwin

Really!?! No one has mentioned the father of technology – Tesla!

http://ah-screwit.blogspot.com danny

I thought I’d love to work with Tesla,

Then I thought it’d actually be more interesting to work with Edison.
it’s not because I have any great love for the man, it’s more the amount of patents to his name for things he “invented”

I’d like to go back in time and work on projects with Edison.
But only so I could come back to the future and see how many of my ideas he’d claimed as his own and patented in his name.

Jim G.

I would totally choose Nicola Tesla. resurrect him, teach him how to use Google, leave him in a room with a set of current text books on modern electronics and a computer with internet access for 2 months then ask him what he thinks and what he wants me to help him make next. The father of the florescent bulbs, Neon signs, X-rays, radio communication, A/C current, Remote Control, the modern electric motor, Lasers, and the Tesla Coil with our available technology, who knows what he would come up with next. It would be amazing just to ask him what his thoughts are on things like modern solar energy and nuclear power….. And what he was trying to do with the Wardenclyffe plant on Long Island before his funding ran out.

José

I thought of Tesla too, but would work with him on an amusement park, something like Walt Disney with Disneyland but in Teslaland.

http://www.facebook.com/davidnsutton DN Sutton

I also would work with my late grandfather, who worked for Bell Labs in 1924 and built the first TV, mechanical no CRT.AT&T’s Bell Telephone Laboratories transmitted halftone still images of transparencies in May 1925. We talked about holographic TV when I was a child.